Carry the Weight of Love and Loss
by childliketendencies
Summary: Sometimes, winning back a girl's heart isn't just as easy as taking her out on an epic date. When Finn's world is shattered by two short words, nothing seems simple anymore - not even pretending. But sometimes karma lends a helping hand...
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's Note:** You might be somewhat surprised to see that I still exist. I assure you – I do, I just haven't really had the creative spark to do anything. I know I've left my other stories wide open and in dire need for updates (and they will come, eventually) but sometimes – sometimes I just sit here and nothing comes. It just doesn't flow. I'm hoping it will soon - I still have a need to tell those stories, I just need to get them out of my head somehow (and trust me, you have no idea how much of a horrible ordeal that is sometimes)._  
><em>Sometime back in November or so I had a short spurt of creativity and started writing a few drabbles for my tumblr (you can find them on there – link's on my profile). But I also signed up for the Christmas Secret Santa project, and this is my contribution. So <strong>Maggie (akisswithacape)<strong> – this is for you. I tried to comply with your wish for a revisit of what Finn and Rachel were thinking during and after the Kiss that Missed – unfortunately, when I sat down to write this, my mind decided to start a bit before that. This is a multi-chapter in probably 4 parts – two of which are written. You have my permission to bug me every day until I have this done (I'll try to have it by the end of the month, tho). I hope you'll like it._

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><p><strong>Carry the Weight of Love and Loss<strong>

I.

There's this song running on and on in his head and he doesn't even know how it got there. It's just there. It just came to him, out of the utter misery that had been the night after their date. He had no idea he knew how to do that – or how he did it. Doesn't really remember writing down the notes – did he do that or did Kurt do it for him? – or the words, but it's his barely legible scrawl that's staring back at him now. And the words should mean something to him, they do mean something, but the place they came from in his head is tied to his heart and that's just a mess – as is his head. He stares at the words and they stare back at him, and it feels like they're mocking him now.

Why did he write a song about wanting to stop pretending they don't have feelings for each other, when all he wants to do now is to forget he ever felt anything? The last thing he wants to do now is to knock on the door of the girls' room and ask her to practice this song with him now. It's literally like walking his heart to the butcher's block.

But they have to sing something. It was him who suggested a duet between Rachel and himself, so –

His feet carry him to that door, and they're a million times more interesting to look at than her face – because of course it's her who answers the door, an eager "yes?" on her lips that kind of turns into a barely audible gulp at seeing him. He thrusts the song sheet at her, his eyes fixed on the view out of their window, and he misses and hears the rustle of paper as she tries to catch the falling sheets. "Wegottapractisethis," he mumbles while she's bent over the floor, picking up the music he wrote.

If he looked at her, he'd see her stare at the sheet in her hand, stare at the words "stop pretending", at the complicated harmonies, all written in a hand she thinks she knows so well that it makes her heart beat too fast for her chest to contain. He'd see the look of disbelief turn into certainty as she reads on, pride slowly pouring out of her heart with every note she reads.

He doesn't look at her until it's too late. Until she's guarded her heart again, steadfastly sticking to the resolution she came to on the Wicked stage. And all he sees in her eyes is something he can't read – but he's almost certain it's pity, and he can't deal with that.

He wants to rip the paper from her grip. It's a stupid song written by a stupid guy. Stupid to think she'd forget everything once she'd see it, and change her mind. Stupid to think there's hope yet just because of a bit of music.

"Give me an hour," she finally says in a voice that sounds totally business-like. "I need to prepare."

"Sure," he says, equally business-like; and he feels like there's something constricting his throat at the thought of having to be near her again so soon.

"We'll practice in here, then? If you won't mind the others," she volunteers when he stays quiet.

He stares at her hands twisting the edge of his music sheets for a second before replying, "Sure."

"See you then," she says after another little silence and two more twists of the paper.

For a moment he's conflicted by the sudden pangs of both panic and anger in his heart at her eagerness to see him gone. "Fine," he chokes out, anger winning.

"Fine!" she says, and there's pain laced in amongst her growing irritation with this whole situation.

But she shuts the door into his face before he can hear any more trace of it, and leaves him even more confused and hurt and angry. It feels like they just had an argument of some sort, but he doesn't know how – wasn't she the one who said she needed an hour? Then why would she be annoyed when he'd agreed to it? Or had he just totally misread that?

He doesn't pay attention to where he's going, and ends up sitting on the steps of the hotel's unused stairwell for an hour, his anger dissipating as quickly as his heartache and nervousness take over at the thought of what's to come. And that's really all he can do: think, and feel, and wish he could just stop doing either.

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><p>He doesn't really have time to think once they get to practicing. Or feel anything but growing annoyance with the other four girls in the room who all seem to have their view on how the number should be choreographed and what words should be emphasized by some gesture or another, while Rachel's only input so far has been opening her mouth to sing her part. When she'd stayed passive, Brittany and Santana had pretty much taken over; he's beginning to feel like a puppet doing their bidding as their commands are pulling at his strings, telling him walk in this way and go that way, and back, and forth.<p>

The moment the image of himself as a puppet on strings appears in his mind, he stumbles, almost losing his balance as he's "strutting" along the line of towels marking the center of their makeshift stage in the middle of the girls' room.

He barely hears Santana's hissed curses at his clumsiness as he's filled with the memory of the funeral: of his realization that there was a string pulling him towards Rachel. He'd been so certain of it at that moment. But now he's just a mess of thoughts.

"Santana, enough!" Rachel's voice cuts through Santana's cursing and his confusion, and again he thinks he can hear pity lacing her words.

It makes him forget everything else and glare at her. She looks away after a moment that feels entirely too long and just makes him angrier at everything.

"You know what?" he says, his annoyance rising with every second he thinks about it. While he hadn't thought he could get through it because of the awkwardness of being around her, all he can really feel now is how stupid all of this is. It's his stupid song that created this situation – like his mind has some perverted need to torture his heart some more – and made her think she'd need to pity him because of what he wrote in it. So maybe he set himself up for that one, but he sure as hell doesn't need her pity now! "Enough of this shit! Go practice the damn song with Mercedes or Santana, you don't need me for that. I sure as hell know my part!"

Rachel snaps her head around to look at him in surprise, and after a moment the worried look in her eyes turns into a glare equally angry to his own. "Well! Fine then! I'll hold up my end if you'll do the same. Since this is your song, I trust you know what you're doing."

He turns to go, pivoting on the spot with his head held high – Brittany should be proud of him for that – when he hears Rachel add in a softer tone: "Better get Mr Schue to go over the choreography with you again, though."

He's so close to exploding with anger that all he can do is snap over his shoulder: "Fuck the damn choreography – stick to walking away from me, and don't forget to throw in one of those circles for effect; that's all the moves we ever make!"

"Are you completely nuts?" Santana screeches after him. "This is Nationals, you moron, you can't just wing the chor—" But then the door shuts after him and her last words cut off. He doesn't need to hear them to know what she was going to say anyway.

He's probably nuts, yes. But right now he doesn't give a damn about winning or losing – he just wants to get it over with.

Halfway to his room, his own parting words still echoing through his head, it occurs to him that even though he truly only meant their choreography, walking away from each other and circling each other is pretty much all they'd ever been good at doing this past year (okay, half a year). And that just makes him even more pissed off.

He ends up spending the rest of the night sitting in "his" spot in the stairwell, singing the song over and over again, and occasionally pressing the ignore button on his cellphone. He doesn't feel like talking to anyone, least of all Kurt.

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><p>By breakfast time – several hours only until Nationals is on – he's dead tired, extremely sore and he has a headache. He's not sure how many times he's sung the song, but he's pretty sure he's got it close to perfect – he's so familiar with it that he could probably sing it backwards in his sleep.<p>

He has this dread sitting in the pit of his stomach, that he'll need to be able to sing it without needing to think about the next words or rise or fall or whatever other pitch change – that he'll need his wits to get through the song with Rachel there with him. There's a part of him that wishes he'd have no voice left after all this practicing, so that he'd have an excuse to simply not go, but even if he couldn't sing – he wouldn't just leave them hanging like that. Somehow. If that makes sense.

Or maybe he just really dreads being around her, after everything.

His anger's no longer there. He doesn't even know why he got so angry to begin with: he doesn't think he can be angry at her for pitying him, when he let her turn him into such a mess with just a few words and no explanation.

An explanation is really what he needs, and the longer he thinks about it all, the more it becomes inevitable. Because - if there's a tether that connects them, then why is she pulling away from it? Has she broken her end of the string somehow, that she can just walk away from it now? She'd wanted him back before, but now… even with Jesse hovering over her again, he'd been somehow so sure he would get her back – so sure she felt that tether, too. She'd told him it killed her inside to watch him with Quinn – and he'd stopped pretending not to care and let himself feel that pain for a moment after she'd walked away from that conversation, and it'd kind of made him turn into the jealous mess he'd been at the prom and all. It'd all been so very much there between them then, and he doesn't understand how it's just gone now. How can it be gone? How can she just not want to be with him anymore? Even on their date-that-wasn't-supposed-to-be-one-but-felt-like-one-anyway she'd seemed like she was really really happy to be with him. Up until he'd tried to kiss her. Up until he'd asked her to take a chance on him. So really – how could he have got it all wrong after all?

He really really needs an explanation for all this. Sometime. When he's done being afraid of the answer.


	2. Chapter 2

_**A/N:** The title of this story is from The Honey Trees – Love & Loss. It just seemed extremely fitting, and seeing that I was listening to it at the time I first sat down to write this, it's probably what prompted my brain to pick up the story at that point in their tale. But anyway, without further ado – chapter two! (And, you know - reviews = love)_

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><p>II.<p>

No one really pays attention when he joins the rest of his group at the breakfast buffet. He's pretty sure he looks and smells like crap, after a night of hiding out in a dusty stairwell, but he doesn't want to go back to his room yet. His stomach has been rumbling insistently for a while, and he's about to give coffee a try in the bid to calm his nerves down.

He's not sure if he's more nervous about facing Rachel or facing their competition. Now that their performance is just hours away, it's starting to get to him.

Maybe they should have at least gone through the song together once.

But when it comes down to it, he's pretty sure he dreads talking to her and hearing her explanation for everything much more than having to go out there and singing a song. For as much as he wants – no, needs! – that explanation, it's not like it's going to change anything, right?

"What the fuck happened to you, dude?"

It's Puck who shoves him to the side when he's trying to shovel another spoonful of scrambled eggs onto his plate, resulting in his egg flying off the spoon and into someone's bowl of fruit, where it's covered up a second later by a ladle full of cereal before he can even call out a warning. The owner of the bowl hasn't noticed the egg, so after a few more seconds of watching bowl and owner, Finn just shrugs and gets another spoonful of egg – with a careful eye on Puck's arm this time.

"Practisingallnight," he mumbles as he picks up some bacon slices, hurrying on so he can get through breakfast quickly and then be the first in the shower.

"Who the fuck you practice with? Last I heard you weren't singing any solos, dude."

Not bothering to try coming up with an answer that Puck would only make fun of anyway, Finn grabs a bread roll and an apple, trying to balance both and his dangerously-close-to-overflowing plate in one hand so he can pick up a mug for coffee with the other, and ends up almost dumping it over the head of some little old lady's grey-haired head as she walks backwards into him, holding her bowl of cereal in front of her like the holy grail as she stomps all over his toes. Wincing in pain, he's about to grab her shoulder and tell her to get off his feet, when she turns around and takes a step back in surprise at finding him there. He grimaces. Looking down into her bowl between them as he's trying to see past it in order to check the floor and make sure his feet are well away from hers, his eyes widen as he can just about spy a bit of yellow that was the egg he lost earlier now floating in milk in between bits of fruit and oats in her bowl. "Oh, pardon me, young man," she mutters and looks up at him, surprise entering her eyes when she notices how much taller he really looms above her. "Uhh sure," he says, at a loss for what else to say, wondering if he shouldn't warn her about the egg after all. But she shuffles past him and is lost in the crowd of breakfasters – _breakfastees? people having breakfast? Is there even a damn word for it? _– before he can so much as open his mouth; so instead he just stands there for a moment, kind of amazed that she was able to move so fast. So he simply stuffs the bread roll into his mouth, the apple into his pocket and pushes his way through the crowd to the coffee dispenser, not noticing that Puck's following him.

"Come on, what happened?" he hears him ask as he's pushing the button on the espresso option, hoping this stuff is strong enough to keep him going for a while.

"Lllmallllnnnnng!" is all he manages to say around the bread roll between his lips. They've had enough late night pizza & videogame sessions to be able to take an educated guess at what they're saying even with a whole bread roll in the way. It's not a surprise then when Puck just shoots him an annoyed glare and stays put instead of doing as told. "Not gonna happen, dude. Not leaving until you tell me what happened. I'm guessing you and Berry didn't spend the night getting down and dirty somewhere, right, cos you wouldn't look like you some bitch nailed your favorite fucking puppy to a wall. So – spill!"

Finn groans, and punches the espresso button a third time. He knows Puck's not going to just leave it alone now, not if he's that persistent. So he gulps down the mouthful of breadroll, turns to his friend and looks him straight into the face. "Nothing. Happened. I was practicing the damn song," he growls at him.

"Fine then, don't talk to me," Puck replies with a sideways swipe of his head as he throws his hands in the air with more theatricality than Kurt and Rachel combined.

Finn just rolls his eyes at him and turns back to the coffee machine to grab his cup when he notices a head of grey hair close to the wall behind his friend. Looking closer, he realises it's the little old lady from earlier, and grimaces. Picking up his mug, he stares at it for a second, trying to make up his mind what to do, but looking back at the old woman who is just raising her spoon to her mouth, he can't just let it be. So he puts the cup and his plate down – much to Puck's amusement – and leaves his friend standing there.

"Ummsorrytobotheryou, butdonteatthat!" he bursts out once he's reached her table. His instinct tells him to stop her more physically than this, but it's an old woman and he doesn't really know her and he's not sure she wouldn't think he was trying to assault her or something if he did. The look she gives him kind of already says she thinks he's crazy enough.

She gives him this questioning stare before finally responding to him. "Aren't you the young man from earlier? The one whose feet I trod on?" He nods, and gives her a half-hearted smile, hoping she'll see that he doesn't mind about that. "So why is it you think I shouldn't eat my breakfast now?"

That's the part he wasn't looking forward to, but he's there now, and it's already awkward, and he's kind of dying to get it over and done with already so he can grab his breakfast stuff – Puck'd better still be watching that – and have that coffee before he's going to drop dead from exhaustion. "Uhh… see… I had this scrambled egg and my friend pushed me and it kinda fell into that bowl."

She's still looking at him, and then down into her bowl, and when she's not saying anything, he points at the little blob of yellow floating on one side of a piece of apple or something. "See? And I totally wanted to tell you when you bumped into me cos I recognized that bowl but you totally surprised me and then you were gone and I… uhhh," he finishes, not knowing the right words for saying that he'd not wanted to care.

With her spoon she fishes out the bit of egg and drops it onto the saucer of her coffee cup. He's watching, and there's this nagging worry growing in him that she's totally angry with him and going to make a big fuss, but when she looks up and meets his eyes, there's a smile on her wrinkled little face. "That's very kind of you, young man. Very kind… " she says, and dips her spoon back into her cereal bowl. He watches her with an odd fascination as she takes a big spoonful and starts chewing on it with what he'd call exaggerated care; all the while wondering if this conversation is over and he should just excuse himself or if she's going to say anything else. So he continues to watch as she chews and chews, his presence as he's looming above her growing ever more awkward, until she finally swallows her mouthful – and he totally has to suppress the urge to gulp down a mouthful of air in imitation – and looks up at him again. "And just to think - if I hadn't stepped on your feet by accident, you'd have never known whom to warn. A lucky coincidence we could call it."

She's got that smile back on her face and he can't help but smile back at her. She's kind of infectious in her cheerfulness. Maybe he should congratulate himself on making up his mind to fess up to her because she's really making him feel good about that. At least something is going right. He nods at her, enthusiastically, with the biggest smile he can give her.

"Or maybe we should just call it karma. Do you know what that is, my dear boy?" she asks, and leans back in her seat with the smile on her face turning into something that makes him want to squirm.

"Yeah sure," he replies, remembering when he'd asked Rachel to explain it to him. He's not quite sure how the old lady thinks any of this fits, since he was the one saving her from- oh. His face flushes as he figures out she meant it the other way around; yeah, she's pretty much seen through him well enough. He was going to ignore it and it'd taken her stepping on his feet to make him feel bad enough to tell her. It was cosmic justice alright.

"Ummm… sorry about that again," he says again, and really wants nothing more than to get back to Puck by now. His face feels on fire.

"It's alright, dear. It isn't like a little bit of egg would have killed me. And it was nice of you to warn me," she says, the kind smile back on her face.

"Uhh okay, well, I'm gonna go now … uhh… enjoy your breakfast," he mumbles, and turns to go. "Nice meeting you," she calls after him, and he seriously wishes he could just hole himself up in the room until they're ready to fly back home – at least that way he can't mess up.

Stupid karma anyway. They should rename it to "Finnitis" or something. He's pretty sure it sums up his life perfectly. Even Rachel would have to agree on that.


End file.
